We can, or not. It doesn’t matter, from a legal point of view, what we think happened. What matters is what the judge or the people on the jury (or whatever it is they have for courts-martial) think happened. And they are not getting their information about the case from news reports. They’re usually specifically selected for having had minimum exposure to news reports about the case, and are asked not to seek out news reports about it (at least in civilian trials they are- again, I don’t know how courts-martial work).
About the time this story broke, I was writing a story which included a sociopathic character. By sociopathic, I mean, the character had no morals beyond “do what feels good, and screw anyone who gets in my way.” There were times I felt physically ill writing this character and more than a little dubious that I had enough bad stuff in my head to fill him out.
Then this story hit the airwaves.
I really, really didn’t need it proven that there were worse things in the world than the nightmares in my head.
So people shouldn’t react to news reported now, because something happening now had also been discused previously? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I had to be on absolute top of everything in order to post here. :rolleyes:
If they did this in Korea, the US would decline authority and let the local government handle it. I think they should do the same thing in Iraq–at least in this case. Public execution n all.
I think that if the accused are found innocent, all the media people who claimed that they were guilty in their media form of choice should stand in for that punishment.
[yawn] So, so trite. What’s the point of committing an atrocity if you can’t put a bit of imagination into it? That’s the problem with rogue soldiers these days, they just go through the motions, they don’t try. Why, back in the days of Genghis Khan . . .
I have no problem with the outrage. It should, however, reflect the current situation, not present old information as though it were new.
An OP pointing out that one participant had confessed, while still expressing outrage that the event occurred, works better because then no one is led to thinking that we have an additional atrocity on top of the previous one. We have a sufficient number of atrocities without attempting to “double report” them.
No problem. If they are innocent, then there is no punishment. I’ll stand in for that.
More seriously, are you suggesting that someone who wrongly concludes a person is guilty because of a heaping pile of evidence and confessions leads them that way, they should themselves be punished? Do you even fucking take yourself seriously?
*Dominican man appears before a judge to be arraigned on charges of beating up an Spanish tourist. The judge asks him if he had met the victim prior to the incident, “no, never” he answers. “Did he insult you in any way?”, “No, he was just sitting quietly in the bar drinking his beer” responds the accused.
“Then”, asks the judge “why the unprovoked attack?”.
“Haven’t you heard”, asks the accused, “about the masacre of the native people of this island, cruelly perpetrated by the Spaniards? Didn’t you know they managed to kill thousands of defenseless men, women and children?”
“Yes, of course I have heard” says the judge, “but that happened over 500 years ago”
“Well”, says the accuser, “I just found out yesterday”.*
Rape/murders are tragically not that rare in the United States. The fact that this crime was committed by men who are supposed to be professionally trained soldiers makes this even worse.
However, I think it also shows the strength of our military court system. Many countries just would not prosecute their own soldiers, and would ignore their war crimes.
Why is it that every time a soldier or a cop commits a crime, so many people feel like they have to chime in with the irrelevant fact that most people in that profession don;t commit crimes. Most football players don’t kill their wives. Most construction contracters don’t have teenaged boys buried in their basement. So fucking what? Has anyone said that this case proves that all soldiers are criminals?
What we can say is that crimes like this make things more dangerous and difficult for the troops that really are just trying to do their jobs as ethically as they can. As a matter of, there is a possibility that some of the innocent guys from this unit were killed in direct reprisal for this crime.
I hadn’t heard the accusation against U.N. peace keepers, that’s quite bad, too.
I really do think that the U.S. military fully prosecutes any crimes like this of which it is made aware. I do think that considering the nature of a large military operation than an unfortunate number of incidents will go unnoticed or unreported, though.
Things have definitely improved, during World War II there were multiples incidents of U.S. soldiers executing German POWs that I’ve read about personally in which no one was ever prosecuted. And in Vietnam it is well known many crimes went unprosecuted, and those that were did not result in appropriate punishments (the guy responsible for the My Lai massacre did under ten years incarceration…maybe even under five.)
